[bDawk20]

I have a Dell Studio 17 with Vista and Wifi capability. I've had the computer for a year and a half, and I've never had a major problem with wireless connection before. Any problem has been purely because of a low connection strength or because I was in a classroom (I'm a college student) in which multiple people were trying to connect at once. Eventually it always worked.

I was home for the weekend and connected to my primary wireless connection and all of a sudden I lost connection and could not reconnect.

I tried restarting and shutting off both the computer and wireless router. I tried resetting the wireless router. I tried turning on and off the Wifi button on my computer. Still cannot connect.

I plugged in an ethernet cable into my internet directly from the router and it runs fine (that is how I am on the internet on my laptop at the moment).

I will not always have access to an ethernet cable when I go back to school later today and I have a project I need to research so I'm kind of in a rush to get this figured out. Also it's just so much easier connecting wireless and obviously I'd like this fixed.

Anyway, I read up on other people's similar problem and I don't know if I changed something or messed up, but now whenever i click to view Wireless Connections the router for my house has a red x next to it and says "The settings saved on this computer for the network do not match the requirements of the network."

Even before it said that I could not connect. And it used to have full signal strength. It would say it can't connect and I could either view other connections (and/or try again) or diagnose the problem. If hit to view others I would try again to no avail. If I hit diagnose it would say that there may be a problem with the wireless internet or something like that and then there would be three options two of them to plug in/set up a LAN connection and a third to "view troubleshooting for low wireless connections" (but I've tried the last option before and all of those steps even though I know the connection is 100% strength).

I know a little about computers, but not a lot, especially with internet connections. If you need me to find out any information or post anything else that would help let me know. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I really need this fixed ASAP so please let me know.

Thank you!

[JohnWill]

You need to remove all the stored wireless network profiles on the machine, then search for networks again. You should be prompted for the encryption key at that point.

Open Network and Sharing Center, click on the Manage wireless networks link on the left. Remove the network names.

[bDawk20]

Thank you! I had read that somewhere and was going to try it, but I didn't want to screw anything else up again. It worked, but it asked for the security key or passphrase. I didn't set this up originally (my dad or whoever installed it must have). Do you know who or where I can find out what it is? Thanks.

[bDawk20]

Thank you! I had read that somewhere and was going to try it, but I didn't want to screw anything else up again. It worked, but it asked for the security key or passphrase. I didn't set this up originally (my dad or whoever installed it must have). Do you know who or where I can find out what it is? Thanks.

[bDawk20]

Nevermind, I figured our the security key. Thank you so much. Problem solved.

Thanks again!